September 2009 Archives

Reputed top mobster Rudy Fratto has been charged with failing to pay more than $30,000 in taxes on nearly $200,000 in income from 2005, according to federal court documents filed this week.

Fratto is accused of directing businesses and others to send payments to a defunct business of his, J.J.F. Inc., in order to avoid paying taxes.

Fratto's name came up most recently in federal court as one of the top mobsters who posed the most direct threat to the safety of Nicholas Calabrese, the star witness in the Family Secrets mob case.

Fratto's name also popped up during testimony in the sentencing hearing of former Chicago chief of detectives William Hanhardt, who was accused of meeting with Fratto while trying to set up a hit. The murder never happened.

Fratto was never charged with any wrongdoing in that matter, and a federal judge did not take the most serious aspect of the prosecutor's allegations into account when he sentenced Hanhardt.